I’ve got hundreds of good memories from all those auditions – meeting people, hanging out, having a laugh with my mum – but unfortunately, I do also have one massively dodgy episode to report, and I hope it serves as a warning to all those young girls just like me, willing to do anything to get a break.
I’d found a talent agency on the internet, and it had links to loads of auditions all over the UK. I sent off my show reel, and a woman called Fran emailed me to say I’d made the shortlist over thousands of other girls. She even asked me to contact her within twenty-four hours to arrange an audition. It all sounded really promising, especially when she said she’d introduce me to a music producer called James. Apparently, he was a producer for Def Jam, a massive US record label, but he’d heard my demo and was now deciding whether to work with me or one other girl on an album. Two days later, I was on my way to a hotel in Bristol to meet James. Don’t worry, my mum came along with me and it all seemed above board. Famous last words…
We found James on his own in the hotel bar, but he said one of his team was working upstairs, while the rest of them were ‘busy in the studio working with Labrinth’. Pretty impressive. James then sat with me and my mum for FOUR HOURS, telling us in detail everything he knew about the music industry and all the amazing things he’d done. He told us exactly how my voice would fit into all these projects he had going on. He even called my old agent and other people I’d been working for. At one point, he was even talking about whether he could buy the rights to a song I’d already recorded. Pretty thorough, I’ll give him that! It was all very impressive, and we fell for it.
Finally, he told us, he’d decided to go with me over the other girl. He told me he’d be putting a £70,000 advance into my bank account for the album, that I’d be flying out to America the very next week, and that I’d be living in one of his record company’s apartments for the next five months while we made the album. Not only that, but we’d be recording the first track the very next day. Amazing! It all sounded too good to be true.
There was one moment that seemed a bit dodgy – he came up to me and out of the blue said, ‘Were you lying about not having a boyfriend?’ I’d been seeing someone, but I was single at that point so that’s what I said. James added, ‘I’ve found out you’ve got a boyfriend in your home town.’ WTF? He was being jokey, not aggressive, but at the time I didn’t know how James would even know about my nearly-boyfriend. I just figured they were investing a whole load of money in me, so it made sense they’d do some digging. Anyway…
James had dinner with me and my mum, but he kept saying we needed to get back to the hotel to write the first song I’d be recording. At this point, James kindly pointed out to my mum that she needed to go home and get my old agency contracts, passport and other official paperwork, otherwise he wouldn’t be able to work with me the next day! Yes, the warning lights should have gone on at this point, but he said he’d booked me a separate hotel room, so I could get an early night and rest my voice. He spoke about everything in such detail, it all seemed above board, and so my mum planned to drive back to Essex, collect the contracts and come straight back.
Meanwhile, back at the hotel, I wanted to get a good night’s sleep. It was all getting very late, and James and I got in the lift to go to our rooms. I put out my hand for my door key, but just then he mentioned there was a problem with my room, so we’d have to wait in his room for a while. He said we could write the song while we waited. Okay then… I sat, while he asked me loads of questions so he could ‘base the lyrics on my life’. It was all weird stuff, like…
‘What’s your relationship like with your family?’
‘Really good, thanks.’
‘What do you dream of doing with your life?’
‘Singing, performing, making records.’
‘What would you do if a guy who was a millionaire came up to you with your career in his hands and said “Fuck me”?’
I sat there and froze. I’m already a paranoid person, I over-think about everything, and it suddenly hit me – ‘This isn’t right.’ How could someone go from normal to weird in seconds?
At this point, I made a quick call to my mum to find out where she was. I knew she was coming back, but I told her to phone me in an hour and check in on me.
He didn’t like that much. ‘You should have a bit more independence, Megan,’ he said. Then it was, ‘No more phones. We’re working!’
From then on, it got more and more awkward between the two of us as he asked me loads more dark questions – ‘Have you been sexually abused?’ and ‘If a guy was ugly but had loads of money, would you fuck him?’ Not only that, but he started making all these trips to the bathroom, in between running his hands through his hair, walking around the room and occasionally touching himself in a suggestive way. At this point, I was planning my escape, especially after I noticed his suitcase on the bed had nothing but papers in it, and there was a pair of tracksuit bottoms on the floor – not exactly what a high-powered music exec would be wearing. All these messed-up thoughts started to go through my head. ‘This guy isn’t who he says he is. So who is he, and how am I going to get out of here?’
At this point, he switched the subject to himself, saying how he’d paid a famous porn star £250,000 to teach him all the moves to ‘make a girl squirt’. He told me how many girls he’d slept with, how good he was in bed, that I seemed like a snob – oh, and that his dad had cancer, his mum was dead and his sister had committed suicide by jumping off a cliff. Can you imagine? Then he said he’d been told he had twelve months to live, and that he’d actually been told that six months ago. For that last bit, I managed to say, ‘I’m sorry.’ But for the rest, I just sat in silence. I was terrified.
Finally, he called someone about my room, and guess what? It turned out there wasn’t one. The hotel had messed up the booking. He said to me, ‘Don’t worry, I’ve asked them to bring a spare bed up to my room.’
I have to admit, I was shaking with nerves by now, but I somehow managed to find my voice – I told him he was making me very uncomfortable, and that I needed my own room. This seemed to make him annoyed, and he replied, ‘Oh right, yeah, I was going to get you your own room, anyway.’
You’re probably thinking, ‘Why is this girl not just running out?’ But I was scared. I knew I was going to get out, but I didn’t want to rile him up, so I was going with the flow for now and planning my escape.
James disappeared for a bit, and I was sat on the bed, thinking, ‘How am I going to get out of here?’ I was looking at the door, and I suddenly saw the peephole change colour, as if he had been standing outside the room the whole time, clearly not sorting out this room thing.
I sat completely still, holding on to my bags, and wondering how on earth I was going to get out of this hell-hole situation without pissing him off even more. But it was getting worse for me, especially when James came back and suddenly announced that the entire hotel was full but he’d somehow sorted me out a suite. He gave me the key, so I went upstairs to this new room while he went downstairs. The first thing I saw in the suite was a bottle of wine and two glasses set out. This was not happening! I instantly called my mum, and told her I didn’t feel safe, but I had no idea what to do. She tried to calm me down, but I was starting to shake. She said she was on her way back and she’d call me again in twenty minutes.
Then James turned up back at the suite, but I think by then he’d finally realised how scared I was of him. He insisted on using my phone and used it to book a room for me at another hotel. He said his friend would pick me up, but I wasn’t having it. I said I’d get a cab, but instead he insisted on walking me. That was a nightmare in itself, him taking me down all these back alleys when we could have just walked along the main road. He asked again for my phone so he could type his email address into it, and it was then I caught a glimpse of his phone. On the screen, I saw ‘SOS’ and ‘SIM not recognised’. All that time, he’d pretended to be talking to people, but he couldn’t actually make one call!
He’d taken my phone to use, but instead he’d been going down all my messages, and he saw all the texts I’d sent my mum while he had me held up in his hotel room. This set him off again. ‘I can’t believe you’re so ungrateful and selfish, after everything I’ve done for you today, giving you this opportunity, and you’re texting your mum telling her you’re uncomfortable.’
I tried to keep calm and just kept saying how sorry I was, but by now he was giving me the silent treatment, so we just stood there awkwardly – him sulking, me shaking, until after a bit he let me walk the rest of the route to the hotel on my own. I’ve never felt so relieved to be on my own, getting to that hotel. Before I walked away, he said, ‘Make sure you say it’s for Fran.’ I found it really weird, but I was just happy to get away from him.
I called my mum, who was already on her way back from Essex to Bristol, and she told me to change rooms, so I did – and I asked the receptionist not to give anyone else a key. An hour later – by now it was three o’clock in the morning – I received an email from James: ‘U ok? Meet me at 9, don’t worry about saying thank you LOL.’ This guy seriously thought he still had me in the palm of his hand. What he didn’t realise was, my mum was coming to pick me up and take me straight home.
Bless her, my mum got even less sleep than me that night. As soon as she’d got my first call, she’d phoned reception at the hotel where I was with James – he’d told us it was fully booked and they told her there were actually loads of rooms available. So that was just another lie James told us. At that point, she was about an hour from home in Essex, but she turned the car round as soon as she got my call and headed back to Bristol, staying in touch with me by phone the whole way. I was in shock about the whole thing – it was only when my mum finally appeared that I burst into tears. We tried to get some sleep, but we were both so messed up in the head, we probably only got half an hour between us. By seven o’clock the next morning, we were back on the road home, and we reported it to the police, just so they had something on file in case James tried to do this to anybody else.
Once I was safe back in Essex, I emailed James asking for more details about him and his record company, but he refused to send me any info. Instead, ‘Fran’ had started emailing me as soon as I’d left Bristol. Hmmm. It was weird that I never heard from her the whole time I spent with ‘James’. Could it be they were actually the same person?
My mum contacted someone at Def Jam. It turned out James didn’t exist.
I received a couple of strange calls too, from a boy called ‘John’. Could that be him as well? But now I was safe back in Woodford, I just blocked his number and got on with my life.
One day soon after, on the talent agency account where all the trouble had started, I received an email from – guess who? ‘Fran’. Telling me I’d made the shortlist over thousands of other girls and asking me to get back to them within the next twenty-four hours to arrange an audition. I didn’t reply.
What’s terrifying about this story is how easy it is for people to take advantage of young, innocent girls who want to make it, who probably aren’t as clued up as me, but are equally hungry, just because they’re desperate to get their big break. It doesn’t matter if they’re promising a modelling contract or a debut album – that ‘James’ story shows how easy it is for arseholes to make false promises when actually all they want to do is take advantage of young girls.
My mum and I had both been to hundreds of auditions by then and spoken to all sorts of people in the industry. But all that didn’t matter – we both still got fooled by James, with his really smooth manner and how much he seemed to know about the music industry. I was young, hungry and very naïve, so to him I was probably just an easy target.
He was incredibly convincing when my mum was there, but he turned into somebody completely different as soon as she went. Even though it pissed him off that I stayed in contact with my mum all night, he knew he wouldn’t be able to get away with anything. But to anyone else, something terrible could have happened. So I just want to say this to all of you out there. Please take note – if something sounds too good to be true, I hate to tell you, but it probably is.